


Palmistry

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Levi Squad 2.0, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 16:38:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3256931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean and Eren stay up in the kitchen together at midnight a lot more times than they would like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palmistry

**Author's Note:**

> For JE week, Day 1: Flirting...which is not what this fic really became. but this account needs more erejeans, so here we are.

Since they began to live together again, Eren’s become increasingly passive aggressive. Jean’s stubbornly unmade bed is always straightened out by the end of the day, but the pillows are punched flat, the comforter lumpy and scrunched, the sheets wrinkled and haphazardly clinging onto the bed.

“Just leave my bed alone,” Jean grumbles when they’re stuck mucking the stables together.

“Yeah, and get in trouble with the Captain? No thanks,” Eren says sourly, brow knit in concentration. He’s quiet nowadays, speaks in short phrases and otherwise deflects conversation, though a single look in his eyes is enough to show that he’s still spoiling for fights as much as he used to. It’s terrifying to see the blank, distant silence that Eren sinks into when he watches the rest of the 104th, excluding Historia of course, load up the cart for a trip to town, or ready their muskets for a short hunting tour. Sometimes he slows down abruptly when he does his chores, or stops all together, and he gets that look in his eyes during those times, too.

“Why should he care whether or not you make my bed?” Jean asks mutinously.

“Because I’ve been with him the longest,” Eren replies, the words short and pinched, shoulders stiff. He doesn’t elaborate.

He doesn’t have bags under his eyes, but from the number of times Jean has woken from nightmares and found Eren’s bed empty, he can’t be getting much sleep either. Always, Jean finds him sitting in the dark in the kitchen, wrapped in a thin throw blanket, looking outside the window to the seemingly endless expanse of grass and trees outside.

“…want to talk about it?” Jean had offered the first time. Eren had shaken his head slowly, as if fixed in a trance, still staring forward. Eren Jaeger, still as a statue, frozen alive in his seat staring unblinkingly at the distant horizon as if waiting for someone to appear, looking cold and small huddled in that threadbare blanket. And for reasons unknown to him, Jean had heated up a cup of herbal tea and stayed up with him, watched his eyes change color with the gradient of the moonlight, blue-grey to green, sometimes to an odd golden color, before cycling back to the grey. The slight movement of the pulse in Eren’s throat had mesmerized Jean, lulled him to sleep, and he had woken with a start the next morning when the Captain kicked his chair on his way to his customary morning cup of black tea, probably muttering uncomplimentary things about dumbass recruits, the stupidity of youth, the death rate of the Scouting Legion, and how all of these things are directly proportional.

Tonight, Eren is out in the kitchen again, and it’s horrifyingly easy for Jean to scoot their chairs together side by side. But things are a little different today. Eren moves slightly, a minute twitch of the head, and slowly, he scans Jean from head to toe, as if he’s never seen Jean before.

“…what,” Jean grumbles, unable to stop the slight flush that rises to his cheeks, feeling the acute presence of Eren’s eyes raking over his body. His voice is almost jarringly loud in the silent, grey midnight.

“Hand,” Eren whispers, his voice hoarse, a pale shadow of its daytime bluster. He extends his hand slowly, palm facing upwards, and he looks at Jean in the eye , his gaze dull and sullen.

“Fucking weirdo,” Jean says, but sets his hand in Eren’s without hesitation. Eren’s palms are warm and soft against his, lacking the callouses that cover Jean’s, and the press of his fingers is surprisingly firm and gentle. Jean shivers at the way Eren traces some of the pits and scars that have accumulated, with a touch so light he can barely feel the drag of skin on skin. Fitting their palms together, Eren frowns a little; his hands are stockier, sturdy, but Jean’s are thin, long, and broad.

“I can’t sleep,” Eren finally admits, fitting their fingers together, two boys sitting up in the kitchen at midnight holding hands. Jean shakes his hand a little, but Eren stubbornly clings to him, squeezing tighter.

“Why not?” Jean sighs, giving up.

“The bed is too soft and there are too many people.”

It’s the first time Eren has directly addressed his feelings about the move, but Jean remembers rumors of how the Jaeger boy might be hidden in the basement.

“Spoiled asshole,” Jean says. “Even having a bed is too good for you, isn’t it?”

Eren doesn’t respond, his eyes fixed on the pale mist covering the trees outside.

“You always stay up with me,” he says, and his hand tightens around Jean’s. He’s sitting ramrod straight in the chair, blanket thrown haphazardly about his shoulders, and he’s still looking, searching. What for, Jean doesn’t know—nothing can be seen from beyond the mist and brush. They look painful somehow, Eren’s midnight vigils.

“You don’t deserve it,” Jean retorts.

Eren’s mouth tightens. “You’re right,” he says simply. Doesn’t explain himself, just agrees.

“What the hell are you on about,” Jean snaps, frustrated, running his free hand through his hair. No talk-backs, no fights, not even a punch. Holding hands in the middle of a dark cabin.

"Jean,” Eren says, and for just a second, the haze seems to lift, like a veil, and it’s normal Eren, bright green eyes, too earnest in expression, and his hand is soft and warm and heavy, shaking even as he crushes Jean’s hand in his grip. “Can we stay like this? Will you stay like this?”

Jean scoffs, pinches the meat of Eren’s hand underneath the thumb, right where Eren usually bites during experiments. “Hey, I’m not giving my beauty sleep up for you.”

Eren smiles in a pained way that looks more like he’s about to crumple in on himself and cry, and Jean can’t help but hold on tighter to the fingers that trace over his knuckles with such care, to the thumb that rubs quietly against the palm of his hand, the index finger that sometimes slips down to his wrist to rest against his pulse, as if to make sure he’s still alive.

"You haven’t changed at all,” Jean murmurs at sunrise, vision blurry, head pillowed on Eren’s surprisingly comfortable shoulder. “You’ve just gotten better at not crying. I’m onto you, asshole. I’m onto you.”

Eren chuckles a little, exhausted, and tucks the edge of the threadbare blanket around Jean’s shoulder the same way he tucks Jean’s sheets underneath the pillows that Eren’s punched flat just for him. If Eren tucked him in like that every day, Jean thinks drowsily, nosing into Eren’s throat so that he can plant his lips against the sudden race of Eren’s pulse, he thinks he would never have trouble sleeping.


End file.
